The Summer of ‘80
Last week, I listed the movies I saw as a 15-year-old during the Summer of ‘79. That was a pretty good summer, but the Summer of ‘80 was way better. I was 16, I had access to a car, and I had busboy money to spend down at the Fine Arts I, II, III, and IV. Here’s what I saw and what I thought at the time:
- June 19, The Shining, “Beautiful and scary.”
- June 28, Fame, “Maybe the best movie in two years.”
- July 1, The Empire Strikes Back, “OK but lacking.”
- July 14, Airplane!, “God, so funny!”
- July 19, Fame again
- July 26, Airplane! again
- August 1, My Bodyguard, “Good but short. Ruth Gordon wow.”
- September 2, Xanadu, “Good music but dumb in places.”
They don’t make summers like that anymore. Sigh. Here we are 28 years later. The Shining was remade (quite unnecessarily). Fame became a TV series, a stage show, a reality series, and will soon be remade. The Empire Strikes Back had four sequels, Airplane! had a sequel and spawned countless imitations, and Xanadu is on Broadway in spite of itself. Around and around we go.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Wow Don, where do I start?!
I love that you thought The Empire Strikes Back was “lacking.” Little did you know how lacking drivel like Attack of the Clones would be 22 years later…
Fame is still great. I don’t care how doofus all those leg warmers look, or how many times the lecherous video guy scene has been made fun of.
Airplane! is still funny enough to see twice in two weeks. I do hope you were getting some exercise outside now and again though…
And you were an E.L.O. fan! I still remember hearing “All Over the World” as I walked to school for my first day of 7th grade. Most of the movie bloggers out there were not yet born… That’s probably better for them than us.